


Owning

by Sunshine170



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 22:48:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/997823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshine170/pseuds/Sunshine170
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a streak of possession that underlines her love for him. It’s not petty or jealous or insecure.  But there’s something uncompromising about the way she looks at him that seeks to stake claim over him, speaks of ownership.</p><p>For years, she’s been writing her name onto every inch of his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Owning

_Mine, mine, mine…_

For years, she’s been writing her name onto every inch of his skin. With every kiss, every caress of her hands, every intense gaze that slices right into his soul.

There’s a streak of possession that underlines her love for him. It’s not petty or jealous or insecure.  But there’s something uncompromising about the way she looks at him that seeks to stake claim over him, speaks of ownership.

Olivia is protective about what’s hers, territorial even.  He’s known that since the time she watched him with that odd disconcerting expression on her face and asked him why he called Rachel.  At the time he’d thought it was her way of reminding him there were walls he shouldn’t try and break. That her world and the people in it were hers and she wasn’t interested in sharing with him.

It never occurred to him till much later that maybe he had it the other way around, that maybe it was him she didn’t want to share.

At work, she was always the consummate professional, never breaching the fuzzy lines that divided their work and family lives. But outside of that, she would take his hand readily enough, lean in, put her arms around him and kiss him without a second thought should the fancy strike her. Anywhere else she would introduce him as her husband with a quiet confidence, a hint of pride even. A statement not meant to boast or even signify his unavailability to the world but simply because…

_My husband, my daughter, my family …._

She had a tendency to put her name on things.  Yogurt and juice boxes that she kept  in the lab’s refrigerator, Styrofoam cups, files, note pads…

She gave their daughter a hyphenated surname and put hers before his.  

He never contested her decision, more surprised than anything that she even included his name at all. And he never thought of it as reflecting upon himself, or indicative of any doubts about his commitment to their life together when she signed her name as primary on all on their mortgage and insurance documents.

There are things in her he could never fight, deep seated instincts to protect herself from abandonment that he couldn’t change no matter how often or how firmly he said his _I love yous._  

Because the problem was never that she didn’t believe him.

It’s just that belief wasn’t quite enough to undo the litany of disappointments that life had dealt her before him, her history too scathed for trust to be an easy concept.

He gets it. It’s a fear that comes from having lost so much in life. She likes to be in control, sure of every variable, accounted for.

It’s never been his style.

She’s asked him once in jest if he was expecting her to take his name when they would be married and he’d blinked at her, truly surprised.

 _“Why would you want to do that?”_ He’d asked, genuinely baffled, curious to know the motive behind such a gesture.

There was no part of him that ever wanted to claim Olivia for himself, brand her for taken through ritual or rings or shared surnames.  He would never be the person who could look at somebody and need to be absolutely certain of their allegiance.

He’s not one for owning…. anything, let alone mark her for himself. Olivia was his as much as she wanted to be…if she wanted to be…

Those were terms he always left for her to decide.

Peter has never had much by way of belongings, except maybe for a fondness for collecting books he shares with his father.  When you’re a man who seeks to live without roots, things means little, possessions can easily turn into a burden, weigh you down.

He has travelled the world conning warlords and fencing antiques, making and then gambling away six figure sums in a span of twenty four hours. He did those things because he can, because he could get away with it and because somehow being that person who could get away with it gave him some respite from the unbearable pain of being himself, of having to actually try at being anything more. But the truth is as far as he was once willing to go for it, money means almost next to nothing to him.

He never needed to be sure of anything more than the air he breathes in and out of his lungs. He’s spent his nights in five start hotel suites under thousand thread count sheets and under bridges with nothing more than the open skies, and he’s slept just fine in both cases.

His running days may be behind him, but he’s still the same person.  It’s not in his nature to assert claim over anything or anyone. He doesn’t care much for labels, or rights that are extensions of those labels.

He never wanted much… of anything, Olivia included.

He needs her of course… more than oxygen, but that’s neither here nor there.

If they couldn’t have had anything more than the odd moment between saving the world, he would have taken it without complaints and been just as happy.  The assurance of tomorrow was never a deal breaker.  Truth be told, he was almost certain they would never have more than the present. Odd, how for someone who’s been in the thick of multiple futures and infinite outcomes, it never occurred to him that there was a future with nice things like marriage and  babies that might pan out for them.

It didn’t exactly…if one got technical, but then why be so cruel?

But those assurances were important to Olivia. They always were.

She never liked not knowing.

That’s why he cuts the ring out of the cord around his neck and slips it back onto his finger. Because he knows the absence of it bothers her far more than it rattles him, even if she’ll never say it, never ask him. Her naked finger far less of an unsettling sight to him than his was to hers.

Her eye catches it the next morning. She doesn’t ask of course, like he knew she wouldn’t, but he meets her gaze, nodding wordlessly, answering the question that probably took root in her mind all those years ago when she left for New York and he wouldn’t go with her.

_Yours,_ he tells her without needing to say the words.

_Always yours…_


End file.
